India gears for its first Covid-19 vaccine: Centre approves Oxford vaccine for emergency use

In a major step towards immunisation against Covid-19 in India, the Centre has reportedly granted SII’s vaccine candidate, i.e the Oxford vaccine emergency use authorization. As India gears up to roll out the vaccine strategy, a dry vaccine drive across states has also been announced today, which will be starting from tomorrow, January 2. 

In a major hope to battle the global pandemic, India has now granted approval to Covishield, Serum Institute of India’s vaccine candidate, as per sources. Gearing up for to begin the process of immunisation, a high-level meeting was also convened today today. Post which, it was announced that a dry vaccine drive that will be starting tomorrow, January 2. UK has already given its nod to the AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use.

Covishield vaccine is likely to cost Rs 440 per person. IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad recently announced the launch of the Covid-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network (CoWIN) system to manage and keep track of the country-wide immunisation programme.

CoWIN is a digitalised platform that will be used to effectively roll out and scale up the mechanism for Covid-19 Vaccine Distribution System, nationally. Healthcare workers, Frontline workers, and People above 50-year can register on CoWIN. COVID-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network aims to facilitate the vaccination process but is yet to be released. There will be a compulsory Registration and CoWIN will communicate the date, time & slot for vaccination and also monitor side-effects & unusual symptoms.

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Pfizer and BioNTech on Thursday became the first Covid-19 vaccines to receive the World Health Organization’s approval for emergency use. A top WHO official said that this is “a positive step to ensuring global access to the Covid-19 vaccine. Union Health Minister, Dr. Harsh Vardhan held a meeting with the Delhi government regarding the preparation of dry run of the Covid-19 vaccination drive on January 2, via video conference. The dry run will be held at GTB Hospital, Daryaganj and a private hospital in Delhi. He went on to provide further details.

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